SPRINGFIELD - Janice and Richard Ray stood in a courtroom here Tuesday and let a judge know about the difficult decisions they first faced when their 23-year-old son David E. Ray was killed in a car crash July 10, 2009, on Interstate 91 south near Exit 4.

“Where will we bury him? Which casket? What songs for the church? What clothes will we bury him in? What to put on his headstone?” the couple said in a victim impact statement.

A prosecutor read the parents’ statement to the judge, saying the two believed they could not make it through reading it aloud themselves, as Nathaniel J. Chisnall pleaded guilty to a series of crimes.

Chisnall, 21, of Enfield, Conn., was the driver of the car in which David Ray, also of Enfield, and five other people were riding.

Chisnall was sentenced to two years in the Hampden County Correctional Center in Ludlow by Hampden Superior Court Judge Cornelius J. Moriarty. Chisnall had been charged with manslaughter by motor vehicle but was allowed to plead guilty to motor vehicle homicide while operating under the influence of liquor.

His jail sentence will be followed by two years probation during which he must stay alcohol free and do 100 hours of community service, speaking to young people about the consequences of drinking and driving.

Chisnall told Moriarty he wished he could switch places with Ray, so Ray would still be alive.

Chisnall also pleaded guilty to three counts of operating under the influence of liquor causing serious injury. Those three charges represented three people injured in the crash of the Jeep Wrangler, into which a total of seven people, all from Connecticut, were crowded when the 2 a.m. one-vehicle crash occurred.

Assistant District Attorney James M. Forsyth asked Moriarty to sentence Chisnall, of 53 Jackson Road, to a 4- to 6-year state prison term, saying Chisnall’s acts were not a youthful indiscretion but were a series of errors in judgment.

Chisnall was driving with a blood alcohol level of .15 with seven people in a vehicle without seat belts for everyone and was going an estimated 73 miles per hour in a 55 mile per hour area. The legal blood alcohol limit is .08.

Forsyth said Chisnall we behind a taxi at East Columbus and Union Streets and swerved around it, accelerating and passing it, hitting the taxi. The taxi driver could not get the Jeep’s license plate so followed it onto the highway, Forsyth said.

Chisnall lost control of the vehicle in the right lane of the interstate near the Exit 4 off-ramp, crossed all lanes and struck the center median guard rail. Ray died after being ejected from the car.

Defense lawyer Charles E. Dolan asked for the minimum mandatory sentence of one year in the Ludlow jail, followed by probation in which Chisnall wanted to speak to young people in the hope that his message might result in “the possibility of saving one life” if at least one person decides not to make the decisions he made that night.

Katherine Carragher, 21 at the time of the crash, wrote a victim impact statement which Forsyth read to Moriarty.

Carragher, who did not want Chisnall punished in the case, said that each of the people who got into the car that night were taking a risk.

“We were all behaving as many young people do, acting as if we were invincible and testing the limits,” she said. She said it could have been any one of them that could have decided to drive that night and she believes no matter who was behind the wheel it would have ended in a similar tragedy.

She said any one of the people in the car “could have decided that driving home was obviously not a good idea and made an attempt to find an alternate ride.”

Forsyth said although Lindinger did not want Chisnall to be incarcerated and wished the state didn’t prosecute the charge against Chisnall that referred to his (Lindinger’s) injury.

In their statement to the judge, Janice and Richard Ray said, “We are still healing from this tragedy but the heart of a family is the most difficult to mend. Our hearts will never be the same.”

Moriarty ordered Chisnall not to drive during his probation. Forsyth said in Massachusetts the conviction results in loss of drivers license for 15 years but he did now know what would happen in Connecticut.